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The Pilgrimage to a New Collaborative Learning Environment

By Luke Fernandez

07/17/07

A university faces a variety of challenges when it begins the task of
choosing a new technology for managing online classes and promoting
online academic collaboration. Often overlooked are the linguistic
challenges it encounters. There are, for example, questions about the
acronyms one uses to describe the technology. Should it be called a CLE
(the term I will use), an LMS, or a CMS? The question of what acronym
to use is an important one to answer. But I'm concerned with a
different linguistic issue: What metaphors best describe a CLE?

The
most common metaphor is that a CLE is a tool. But too often CLEs are
described merely as tools. During a recent meeting at our university we
were ruminating on whether faculty would be receptive to changing CLEs
given the headaches that are involved in learning a new system. One
faculty member observed that CLEs are really like shovels because they
are not all that difficult to use. Once a faculty member has learned
how to use one shovel he or she can, with a little training, be taught
to use a new one. A new tool might feel a little different at first,
and instructors might not be able to manipulate course content with
quite as much expertise as with their previous tool. But in time,
faculty would be able move their course data around with as much
facility as they move dirt around with a new shovel.

But this
doesn't help faculty think very deeply about other challenges in CLE
decision making. For that, another metaphor is needed. To this end, I
think it can be helpful to think of a CLE as a country--a country to
which one is migrating data and (more importantly) people. When a CLE
is compared to a tool, questions of functionality are highlighted. But
when a CLE is thought of as a country to which one is possibly
immigrating, questions about governance and community and culture begin
to take on more significance. When the immigration metaphor gains
traction it leads to some important questions about community that
don't otherwise get asked, such as: Would you prefer to move to a
country where you and your peers can play a role in your future
destiny? Or do you want this destiny to be determined for you? Does
this country provide a safe and nurturing harbor for the spirit of
inquiry and innovation that is so important to university life? Will
you be allowed to own property in your new country? And are there
compacts that will encourage you to improve your country's property
even if you can't own anything?

Such questions highlight the
fact that choosing where to go next is not just a question about tools.
Think for example of the pilgrims' migration from Europe to the
American wilderness. Compared to Europe, America appeared as a land
that was relatively bereft of technical infrastructure. There were no
roads, no familiar shelters, no domesticated cattle, and relatively few
developed crafts, industries, or agriculture. But while these
deprivations weighed heavily on the pilgrims, their decision to
immigrate and to form a compact amongst themselves was based on
something other than technology. They were looking for an environment
where they could control their own destiny and live in a fashion that
promoted their underlying moral values.

A move to a new CLE is
more like a pilgrimage than people may think. To be sure, a CLE
migration isn't as laden with the moral and political imperatives that
motivated the pilgrims, but moral issues are not as absent as people
are led to suppose when a CLE is seen merely as a tool. The country and
immigration metaphors help to highlight these issues.

As many
schools have found out, choosing a CLE isn't like going down to the
local hardware store and choosing one tool over another based on price
and functionality alone. While CLEs are tools, they are tools that are
created and embedded within much larger social organizations. Once one
begins to use these tools, one becomes bound to the social
organizations that use, manufacture, and support these tools. By using
the tools, universities are entering (whether implicitly or explicitly)
into a social compact that may or may not be aligned with a
university's long-term interests, values, and culture.

To fathom
the full implications of this compact, and to read its fine print, CLE
strategy can't be described as a choice about shovels or any other
simple tool. If CLE advocates want faculty to consider the full import
of these compacts, richer and more powerful metaphors need to be
introduced. These metaphors can expand and enrich CLE conversations.
Used successfully they can help reveal the moral and social issues
which might not otherwise be expressed during CLE decision making.

About the Author

Luke Fernandez is an assistant manager of program and technology development and an adjunct instructor in information systems and technologies at Weber State University (UT).